Assessing the Legal Frameworks of U.S. Boat Strikes Against Venezuela

On September 2^nd, 2025, the United States carried out its first airstrike against a Venezuelan vessel suspected of drug trafficking. Media reports later alleged that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth issued a verbal order to “kill everyone,” prompting a second strike that killed two shipwrecked survivors. Subsequent congressional testimony disputed these allegations, but the strikes have nonetheless sparked intense legal scrutiny. Some members of Congress characterize the operation as a potential war crime, while others defend it as a lawful counter-narcotics action. This debate presents challenging legal questions, which can be viewed through multiple frameworks: the War Crimes Act and international humanitarian law to assess armed conflict liability; international criminal law to evaluate potential crimes against humanity; international human rights law, which governs the use of lethal force outside armed conflict; and U.S. domestic criminal law, which provides mechanisms for holding individuals accountable.

Legal commentary has largely framed the strikes through the lens of war crimes, examining their legality under the War Crimes Act and international humanitarian law. The War Crimes Act, codified at 18 U.S.C § 2441, defines a “war crime” by reference to the Geneva Conventions as a serious violation of international humanitarian law. The statute applies only in the context of international armed conflict between states or non-international armed conflict between a state and an organized non-state armed group. Although the Trump Administration classified the operations as a non-international armed conflict, citing attacks by cartels, the executive cannot establish that classification by declaration alone. Neither Venezuela nor the Tren de Aragua drug cartel is engaged in sustained armed hostilities against U.S. forces, and sporadic military strikes against criminal organizations do not meet the threshold required under international law. Accordingly, despite the initial emphasis on war crimes allegations, legal experts have concluded that the strikes fall outside the scope of war-crimes liability in the absence of armed conflict.

Concluding that the strikes are not war crimes does not necessarily mean they were lawful. In the absence of armed conflict, legal scholars must instead assess the use of lethal force under international criminal law, domestic criminal law, and international human rights law. These frameworks help determine whether state conduct or individual actions violated legal norms and obligations. 

Although the United States does not recognize the International Criminal Court’s jurisdiction, Article 7 of the Rome Statute provides a useful framework for assessing whether state violence amounts to crimes against humanity under customary international law. For instance, the ICC has alleged that former Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte bears responsibility for crimes against humanity arising from the extrajudicial killing of suspected drug traffickers. While the Rome Statute does not hold the U.S. accountable, extrajudicial killings of civilians or noncombatants as part of a widespread or systematic violate customary international law and indicate crimes against humanity. In this context, the September 2^nd boat strikes that killed shipwrecked survivors raise similar legal concerns.

Beyond international criminal law, analysts should also scrutinize the September 2^nd operation under international human rights law (IHRL), which governs how state actors may use lethal force outside armed conflict. Under IHRL, Article 6 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), to which the United States is a party, protects the right to life. States violate IHRL when they carry out extrajudicial killings, which constitute arbitrary deprivation of life. A killing becomes arbitrary when states do not act in self-defense or in defense of others against an imminent threat of death or serious bodily injury. Consistent with this standard, the United Nations Human Rights Committee and the U.N. Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions define extrajudicial killings as deliberate, state-caused deaths executed without due process and outside the narrow circumstances in which lethal force remains strictly necessary. The facts reported around the U.S. boat strikes do not meet these exceptions, because Article 51 of the UN Charter permits states to use lethal force only in response to an “armed attack,” and drug trafficking alone does not meet that threshold.

The two individuals killed in the second strike were shipwrecked survivors who reportedly were unarmed, posed no imminent threat, and appeared to signal for help. At that point, the U.S. forces lost the threat necessary to justify lethal force under IHRL. Reports also note that the military had non-lethal alternatives, including maritime interdiction, surveillance, or arrest, which they plausibly could have employed and commonly do in counter-narcotics operations.

International human rights law binds states, not individuals. Accordingly, the United States bears responsibility for any violations of its treaty obligations, which may prompt international condemnation. Although IHRL attributes primary responsibility to states, it does not shield individuals who authorize or carry out extrajudicial killings from criminal liability.  When a state violates its human rights obligations, it has a duty to investigate, prosecute, and punish those responsible. U.S. authorities exercise this duty through the domestic criminal law system. Individuals who directly carried out, authorized, or facilitated the strikes could face criminal liability under U.S. law. For service members, the law permits prosecution under the Uniform Code of Military Justice for offenses such as murder, dereliction of duty, or following unlawful orders. Civilian officials may likewise face liability under applicable federal criminal statutes, depending on the facts and their level of involvement.

This ongoing operation has sparked significant legal debate, highlighting how conduct traditionally framed as military operations increasingly implicates core principles of criminal law. The controversy underscores the limits of relying on armed-conflict classifications as a shield from liability and demonstrates how domestic criminal law and international human rights law increasingly define state accountability. If the U.S. continues to pursue law-enforcement objectives through military means, criminal law practitioners will shape the boundaries of legality, accountability, and individual responsibility.